The top filly pacers last season among two-year-olds were Fancy Filly and Put On A Show. As the 2010 stakes season begins to heat up, the two are making claims
for top honours again.
Fancy Filly and Put On A Show are both 4-for-4 this year after each won an elimination for Saturday’s $666,000 Fan Hanover Stakes for three-year-old filly pacers at Mohawk Racetrack. Fancy Filly won her elim by three-quarters of a length over Rock N Soul in 1:51.2 while Put On A Show won her race by 5-1/4 lengths over Brushstrokes in 1:51.1.
Last year, Fancy Filly won 10 of 12 races and earned $840,926 for trainer George Teague, Jr., who owns the filly with Patrick and Marianne Callahan’s Only Money Inc. and Ted Gewertz. Put On A Show in 2009 won seven of nine starts and banked $776,498 for trainer Chris Ryder and owners Craig Henderson and Richard and Joanne Young.
In their only head-to-head encounters, Fancy Filly beat Put On A Show by a length in the $628,178 Breeders Crown while Put On A Show defeated Fancy Filly by a half-length in the $810,300 Shes A Great Lady Stakes. The only other loss for both fillies came in their respective eliminations of the Breeders Crown. Both finished second.
Fancy Filly, who also won the 2009 Three Diamonds with a world-record 1:51.1 performance, was voted Canada’s best two-year-old pacing filly at the 2009 O’Brien Awards in addition to being voted the sport’s best two-year-old filly pacer by the U.S. Harness Writers Association.
This year, Fancy Filly, driven by Brian Sears, won the $250,072 James M. Lynch Memorial Stakes at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs prior to heading to Canada. Put On A Show claimed the $175,000 Miss New Jersey and $200,000 New Jersey Sire Stakes championship, both at the Meadowlands Racetrack.
“It’s good for the game,” Teague said about the two fillies making sharp returns this year. “It’s nice for me, too, having one of the top two fillies. I think we’ve got the top one, but we’ve still got to keep doing it.”
Fancy Filly, a daughter of Western Hanover-Fanciful Hanover, was purchased as a yearling for $15,000 at the Lexington Selected Sale. Her win in the Fan Hanover elim pushed her career earnings to more than $1 million.
“She’s handy, she’s good gaited; she’s got all the tools,” Teague said. “She really likes what she’s doing. That helps a ton. She’s a tough little horse and does everything she’s supposed to do. She knows how to win. Good horses do good things.”
Put On A Show, driven this year by Tim Tetrick, is a daughter of Rocknroll Hanover-Stienams Place who was purchased as a yearling for $75,000 at the Lexington Selected Sale. She is a half sister to multiple stakes-winner Showherthemoney.
“She came back strong; no problems,” Ryder said. “She’s always had a bit of size, but she got bigger over the winter. Everything is straight ahead.”
The connections for the elimination winners (including A And Gs Princess, who won the remaining elim by a nose over Western Silk in 1:51.1) got to pick their post positions for Saturday’s final. Fancy Filly will start from post three, A And Gs Princess from post four and Put On A Show from post five.
“We were the last to pick, so it was either take the two or the five,” Ryder said. “The five is a good spot because Tim can watch the other two (elim winners) and decide what he wants to do. It should be a good race.”
To view Saturday’s entries, click here.
This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit www.ustrotting.com.